


your whole life shows in your face

by dCryptid



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dCryptid/pseuds/dCryptid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One could not, no matter how hard they tried, truly wage war against the advance of time – time that would turn the skin along his jaw to crepe and mark his hands with liver spots. And ever since Jack had become Jack, he had never faced an enemy that he could not decisively destroy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your whole life shows in your face

Jack wasn’t a young man, anymore.

Oh, it’s not like it was a secret or anything – the amount of editing and airbrushing that went into all his propaganda photos was immediately apparent to anyone who had half a brain, and they always left the signature streak of grey in his thick, dark hair – a mark of wisdom, his marketing director said, or some shit like that, and he let it stay because it made the rest of his lush, upswept hair look even better than it would if he lacked the contrast of that single silver lock.

But it wasn’t until you met him in person that you were really struck by the fact of his age, as no careful tightening of his mask could hide the furrows between his brows or the lines around his mouth, and the hollowness of his cheeks looked more like the falling skin of age than good bone structure and artful starvation. Youth was not a distant memory, but it was definitely something that had passed him by. It wasn’t visible in his walk or audible in the throaty, commanding timbre of his voice, but it could be felt in his mismatched eyes, if one had the opportunity to get close enough to notice.

It worried him – more than it should, he knew, as everything was going his way – his command over his employees was absolute, and his plan to reign over the planet of Pandora was coming along perfectly. The bandits fell in waves before him, and people from across the galaxies lined up in their place to put themselves on the list to get a chance to live in his shining new cities. There was nothing to threaten him that he could not overcome, nothing to oppose him that he could not strike down.

And that was exactly the problem – one could not, no matter how hard they tried, truly wage war against the advance of time – time that would turn the skin along his jaw to crepe and mark his hands with liver spots. And ever since Jack had become Jack (John a distant memory, and one that he would be happy to be rid of), he had never faced an enemy that he could not decisively destroy.

So he fought sideways, slowing down the advance as best he could. In the privacy of his own quarters he did stretches that were advertised to keep the joints limber and the muscles strong, and he downed vitamins by the handful and chased them with drinks designed to revitalize the organs and sharpen the mind. He had even attempted to take tips from Moxxi, when she deigned to answer his calls, but all her advice about makeup and creams and plastic surgery really wasn’t much good when he was already wearing a flesh mask that was tuned as taut as it would go.

So he wore his pants too tight to advertise the still-youthful bow of his legs, and layered vests and sweaters across his torso to enhance the barrel of his chest. He convinced himself that the lines across his brow conveyed determination and power, not weakness, and chose his words with a disguised care to match the verbiage of a younger generation.

But when the winds blew cold his bones creaked and complained, and already he was finding certain foods hard to stomach and long flights of stairs hard on his knees. He upped the sass, demanded increased production rates in his cities, and berated the poor advertising director who neglected to edit out the lines at the corners of his eyes in the latest video broadcast to the outlying planets.

Handsome Jack could not fight age, but he was not going to let it win, either.

In his arrogance (intentionally reminiscent of those in their youth), he taunted Vault Hunters across the galaxies, calling them to him with promises of riches and glory, only to shatter their bodies against Pandora’s unforgiving ice and soil. He smiled as they fell, feeling the stretch at the corners of his mask, and reminded himself; not too wide, not too far. Save your face.

And he could swear that every batch of ever-hopefuls was younger than the last, each group of faces fresher and each set of limbs more boundlessly strong. It made him angry, sadistic, and he mocked them over the Echo even as they choked on their own blood and bile, raging against the youth that they had as it slowly sapped from their bodies and into Pandora’s thirsty soil.

There was one group that came through that made him absolutely wrathful – they were all so young, so fit and healthy, not so much as an arthritic finger among them – but they weren’t so bright-eyed, and that’s what made him clench his fists and shake with rage. He had heard their stories before he lured them to Pandora with artfully timed radio ads and promises of knowledge, and he knew that they had all already been to hell and back. How dare it not show on their faces like his hell showed on his? Especially the youngest one, the little redheaded engineer with the killer robot at her command – she was practically a child, certainly no older than his own darling daughter.

He bit his lip so hard that it bled, punching through both mask and the living skin beneath. Best to not compare his Angel to these bandits – she was an innocent, and these scum were only here to find fame and indulge their hedonistic desires. But it didn’t change the fact that they were all so young – the Siren, with her hopeful eyes trained on a new world. The soldier, still in his prime, ever-ready to fight. The Pandoran native, with his stocky, solid limbs and quick reflexes. Even the helmeted assassin had a limber body that could only belie youth (if he was at all human), and the psycho bandit’s frame was lean and rippling as he waved his buzz axe into the wind, clinging to the side of the train as it raced through the wastelands.

Handsome Jack saw red.

But despite his best efforts, his best robots and a neat parcel of explosives that was designed to cause the train to hurtle into the ice pack and crush everyone inside, they would not die. They struggled to their feet as he stared in disbelief, limped across the ice as he grit his teeth and tensed his shoulders, healed and armed themselves as he howled with bitter rage and beat his hands furiously across the display and keyboard before him.

He composed himself as they fought their way into Liar’s Berg (with the help of that disgusting robot – the only reason he had left Baron Flynt alive was with the hopes that he would crush that annoying little squawking trash can into scrap), and by the time he finally hailed them over the Echo he sounded like himself again – or at least the carefully constructed, neatly controlled version of himself that he presented to the world, the one that felt not age, nor weakness, nor fear.

He taunted them, his language coarse and brash, the selective vocabulary he had built for himself spilling from his lips with practiced ease. He was cocky, he was flawless, he was strong and brazen and eternally in control – oh, Handsome Jack did not pretend at youth. He was young, and always would be young, because power would always be his.

At least, that’s what he told the Vault Hunters. That’s what he told Pandora. That’s what he told all of the galaxies, and everything that lay beyond. He would throw it in their faces until they could not see anything else, and that was just the way he wanted it. Because inside, in the cold corner of what might have been called his heart, the part of Jack that had held onto the wisdom and insight that came with his years began to whisper that maybe, just maybe, his time was about to come.

But Jack was impatient, and had no time for the wisdom of old men, especially if the old man was himself. He was going to make those arrogant Vault Hunters fall, and spill their blood into the bleached, thirsty dust of Pandora. He was going to watch as the light of life drained from their eyes, and he was going to drink it in like the finest of wines, water from the Fountain of Youth.

Handsome Jack knew that he was not going to die – not today, not tomorrow, not anytime soon. He was young, and the young still have a long time to live.

**Author's Note:**

> not really sure where this came from, but here it is. I can't see Jack as someone who could ever give up anything without a fight, even if he can't really fight it at all.


End file.
